The What Works Study: Instruction, Literacy and Language Learning for Adult ESL Literacy Students

The focus of the What Works Study is on adult ESL literacy students‣꼏ESL learners who lack basic literacy skills and have minimal proficiency in English. These learners face the dual challenge of developing basic skills, decoding, comprehending and producing print. Until the last quarter century, schools and resettlement agencies designed ESL classes on the assumption that adult students had the basic education and literacy skills to learn another language (Van de Craats, Kurvers & Young-Scholten, 2006). A wave of immigrants that arrived beginning in the late 1970s challenged this assumption, as these new immigrants did not have the strong educational experiences upon which literacy is built. Without the basic text processing skills that allow them to follow text that appeared in class and in textbooks, these students became frustrated, overwhelmed and had a high drop out rate, due to their inability to catch up the missing literacy skills and keep up with the more literate students in the class (Wrigley & Guth, 1992). Recent trends indicate that the number of new immigrants to the U.S. who have very low levels of literacy is continuing to increase (Fix, Passel and Sucher, 2003). The What Works Study is the first large, national study to examine these students: who they are, their instructional experiences and what they learn. However, the goal of this study was not merely descriptive: it also sought to identify “what works”—the instructional activities that help to develop and improve ESL literacy students’ English literacy skills and their ability to communicate in English, by addressing the following questions:

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